Impure Blood (15 page)

‘I’m still a little disquieted. I was hoping to find her so we could discount her from the investigation.’

‘Well, we’ve got Lartou’s frame of her from CCTV out there now. Wide coverage. Someone somewhere will come forward.’

Darac turned on to the major route to the north-east, Route de Turin.

‘I’m putting this down to the heat earlier, but after she tottered out of Rue Verbier, I pictured her getting into a limo, where divesting herself of her wig, prosthetic make-up and body padding, she turned back into…’

‘Johnny Hallyday?’

‘I was thinking Juliette Binoche. But you’re right. It’s ridiculous.’

Bonbon gave up on the
pan-bagnat
. Stuffing its remains into an evidence bag, he dropped it unceremoniously to the floor.

‘So what’s your possible lead?’

Bonbon flipped open his notebook.

‘Number 67 Rue Verbier is an apartment house. Apartment 9 is a holiday place owned by one Marie Lacroix. The young couple who have taken it for the week told me they arrived to find Mademoiselle Lacroix “half-upset, half-angry”. At first, they thought it was because they had arrived late for the handover but the actual reason, she told them, was that she’d just seen something happen on the street and it had appalled her.’

Darac gave him a look.

‘Go on.’

‘However, in the next second, Lacroix had downgraded “appalled” to “discouraged” and quickly changed the subject.’

‘Probably worried the couple might look for somewhere else to stay.’

‘Perhaps. Anyway, she’s going to be interesting to talk to. She’s normally home by about 8.30 on a Friday according to the concierge in her building. A Villefranche address…’ He glanced at his notes once more. ‘Number 1, Quai Mercier – Apartment 6.’ Bonbon produced a tattered paper bag from his pocket. ‘Aniseed drop?’

‘Pass.’

‘Wise.’

‘I came up with something,’ Darac said. I was looking into whether Drugs or Vice had Florian under surveillance, right? It seems neither did but by chance, Armani happened to be in Rue Verbier at about the time Florian arrived there.’

‘“About”? Doesn’t he know exactly when?’

‘He was still off duty at that point.’

‘Don’t tell me – shopping?’

‘For shoes, this time.’

‘Well, a drug squad captain can’t have enough pairs of handmade loafers, can he?’ Bonbon’s grin was wider than ever. ‘I take it he didn’t see Florian.’

‘No he didn’t. But you know what I’m wondering.’

‘If Florian may have seen
him
? And that was why he hid and poured the GHB away there and then.’ Bonbon weighed the idea. ‘I like it, but isn’t there a problem?’

Darac nodded. ‘How did Florian know who Armani was? Even somebody who had been busted by him wouldn’t recognise him off duty.’

‘And Florian’s record is whiter than white, anyway. But look – we’re only halfway through day one of this case. We’ll get there, chief. We always do.’

Darac liked Bonbon’s optimism but a high clearance rate didn’t guarantee anything. A criminal investigation, like a jazz solo, was a journey into the unknown. Although the analogy had its limitations, one element held true: the more complicated the journey, the easier it was to get lost. And just because you’d made it out and back a thousand times before didn’t mean you were going to do so successfully the next time. Therein lay the excitement for him.

Following the course of the Paillon river, Route de Turin described a sweeping right-hand turn as it approached the neighbouring quarters of L’Ariane and La Trinité. Ahead, the three chimneys of the municipal waste incinerator cast long shadows towards the apartment blocks.

‘La Trinité,’ Darac said. ‘A trinity of chimneys.’

‘It looks worse than it actually is, I’m told. Which is just as well because it doesn’t look pretty.’

‘If you offered one of these apartments to Mansoor Narooq, he’d bite your hand off. He’d give anything to be able to breathe that lovely air.’

As they drew up in the lee of La Masarella, Darac broke the news that Granot had landed any Tour fan’s dream assignment – a free night out at the pre-race bash.

‘I don’t want to say Granot always gets the plum jobs…’ Bonbon’s foxy grin was struggling to cope with the news. ‘…but he always gets the plum jobs!’

Darac carefully scanned the block’s roof as they got out of the car. On a recent visit, a full-sized fridge had smashed into the pavement next to him. Kids being kids.

‘Always? Not
always
.’

‘Always!’

‘He did have to attend the security briefing first. For a while there, he was convinced Nice was going to be turned into a blood bath come Sunday. That can’t have been—’ Darac’s mobile rang. ‘It’s Perand.’ He put the call on speaker.

‘Go ahead.’

‘Yeah – Lartou’s photo of the trolley woman has done the trick. A neighbour recognised her and called in. She’s one Corinne Delage, sixty-nine years of age, widow, lives up near the Stade du Ray.’

‘Excellent. Delage has no previous, I suppose?’

‘Record as long as your arm.’

‘Well don’t keep it to yourself,’ Darac said, sharing an irritated look with Bonbon.

‘With one exception, petty thievery and shoplifting seems to be Corinne’s thing. That exception is interesting though. In 1998, she killed a neighbour’s dog. And she used poison to do it. Warfarin.’

‘Administered how?’

‘Not by syringe, sadly. She mixed it up in food. She admitted it but claimed she was trying to get rid of rats and Fido got it by mistake. Even though the dose was way in excess of what you would use on vermin, she was believed. She’s been a good girl since. Or not caught.’

‘Was the neighbour who spotted her in Lartou’s photo the same one whose dog was poisoned?’

‘No – different. The bereaved dog owner moved away some years ago. The picture I’m getting is that old Corinne isn’t a very popular girl. I’m going over to talk to her now. Without my big sister, you’ll be glad to know.’

It had been going so well.

‘Just do your job properly when you get there.’ Darac returned Bonbon’s quizzical look. ‘Stay in touch.’

Bonbon flicked a film of sweat off his forehead.

‘I’m feeling happier about the old woman. But what was that about the sister?’

‘Just Perand being Perand.’

Neither of them was relishing the prospect of putting on a jacket. But on the whole, it was a good idea to conceal firearms if you could. They slipped them on and set off for the entrance lobby of the building.

‘What’s Manou’s apartment number, chief?’

‘Seven. Ground floor.’

It was Bonbon’s turn to scan the roof.

‘Come on, kids. Lob another one down. We could do with the ice.’

It was the short one who eventually plucked the letter off his chest. Paying no attention to meaning, she recited the text in a headlong blurt – a slapdash, thoughtless performance. It suited him perfectly. The girl couldn’t have taken in a single word and no one alive was less likely to have read between the lines. But it made his pulse quicken, alright. The heart-rate monitor confirmed it. How he needed that TV!

It was 21.3 degrees now. Hot. Scorching.

Time. Had he been able to see the clock on the rear wall, it would have told him it was gone seven o’clock in the evening. But 7 am or 7 pm – it really made no difference. It hadn’t for days. Probably. Tomorrow would be different.

He thought back to his previous experiences of hospital. Life was busy for your average in-patient – an endless sequence of set pieces and ad-hoc events. The first big moment of the day was breakfast. After that, ablutions. Then the first trolley-round of drugs. That safely negotiated, excursions to a clinic or, more exotically, the MRI machine. Followed by the periodicals trolley. And then the drinks trolley. Afterwards, chatting with the fuckwit in the adjacent bed was the form. By lunchtime, you were exhausted. You had to take a nap in the afternoon, partly to get your strength up for the third set piece of the day: dinner. And then, too close for comfort, the fourth: visitors. If you had any. Finally, you might squeeze in a spot of TV before the lights were dimmed for sleep. By God, you needed it.

An ICU was different. A drip-fed patient had no breakfast, lunch or dinner to look forward to. Nor day or night. Everything was homogenous. A prelude to death.

But all that could change. With the TV, it would change. It would give him the Tour. For three whole weeks, his days would have a beginning, a middle and an end. And that would be the least of the excitement. There would be the prologue, the time trials and the road stages. There would be the breakaways, sprints and climbs. He’d be able to watch every moment of the battle for the yellow, green and polka-dot jerseys as they unfolded. Battles that he had a very personal reason for needing to see.

It would be the fat one. She was the only one concerned enough to want to be certain. She had almost asked him about the TV last time, he could tell. Next time, she would say it out loud. Something like: ‘You know, the race starts today. Are you sure you don’t want that TV?’ And he would blink twice to tell her that he definitely wasn’t sure. ‘So do you want it, then?’ He would blink once. Once, not a hundred stupid times. And then they would wheel the TV in and turn it on. A true life-support machine.

Come on, fat one.

Not long to wait…

‘We may as well not have bothered with the jackets, chief. Only a
flic
would be wearing one in this heat.’

At least they had made it into the building without being flattened. The muffled thuds of competing sound systems welcomed them into a shabby, cheerless lobby; cheerless that is, except for the presence of a coffee-skinned woman wearing a vibrant orange bubu and head wrap. Humming sweetly to the child squirming on her out-thrust hip, the woman was reading notices attached to a board headed
Your La Masarella
. The child, a girl, appeared much too old to need carrying but as she jerked her head up, Darac noticed the rolling eyes, the tongue exploring the air between her contorted lips. She cried out, suddenly.

‘Sshhh… There now.’ The woman kissed the child’s ear. ‘Mama’s here.’

‘Good evening, madame,’ Darac said, giving the mother a warm smile as he and Bonbon went to cross behind her. The woman looked the visitors up and down and returned to the notices.

Passing under a trashed CCTV camera, Darac and Bonbon pushed through a door at the rear of the lobby and entered a corridor of blue-painted brick. American rapper voices came and went as they passed along it towards number 7. The bros were looking to catch up with some skank-ass bitches. They were going to blip them off. Whatever that meant.

It seemed Imanol Esquebel favoured high bpm dance music.

Bonbon gave Darac a look.

‘We don’t want the full Hollywood, do we?’

‘No, no.’

Darac hated guns. And up until a couple of years ago, he’d maintained that you were more likely to be shot, stabbed or have acid thrown in your face if you were brandishing one. That was before he’d stopped a bullet during a routine arrest.

‘Just cover me.’

Standing with his back to the wall so he wouldn’t be seen from inside the apartment, Bonbon drew his SIG semi-automatic. He kept his eyes trained on Darac as he knocked hard on the door. The music track died in mid-beat. As the seconds passed, no one appeared. Darac knocked again. Finally, the door opened. The smell of Pagan Man-scented sweat hit his nostrils.

He showed his badge.

‘Monsieur Imanol Esquebel?’

‘Maybe.’

Short, powerfully built and breathing hard, the young man was Manou, alright. A towel around his neck, he was wearing only a pair of Lycra shorts. If he was carrying a weapon, it was difficult to imagine where he might have been concealing it. Darac gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Bonbon holstered his gun and stepped away from the wall.

‘Sorry to interrupt your exercises, Manou,’ Darac said. ‘May we come in?’

His black eyes fixed on Darac’s, Manou’s biceps flexed impressively as he began drawing the towel slowly across his neck. After he had duly conveyed to them that the decision to admit them had been entirely his own, he stepped aside.

‘Thank you.’ Darac walked past him into a minimally furnished white-walled living space. From the couch to the blond wood dining table, it looked like a cut-price replica of Emil Florian’s lounge. A computer sat at a workstation in one corner. It was a year or two older than Florian’s – his cast-off, perhaps. Another job for Erica.

Bonbon gestured Manou back into the living room.

‘It’s alright, I’ll close it.’

It was craft disguised as politeness. Leaving a suspect door-side was a non-starter. Manou smirked as he padded back into the room. A dumb trick like that didn’t fool him.

‘He knows that one, Bonbon.’

‘Oh, that’s clever, Monsieur Le Flic. Only one problem. I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.’

Manou’s accent was almost caricature Basque.

‘Listen – you’re Biarritz, right? I’m Perpignan. A Basque and a Catalan – we boys from the south-west ought to stick together.’

Manou essayed a look that suggested sticking to Bonbon was the last thing he fancied.

Darac glanced through an open doorway into the larger of the apartment’s two bedrooms. In it stood the multi-gym machine that was the source of all the sweat.

‘That’s quite some kit.’

‘Cut the crap. Why are you here?’

‘I believe you know a Monsieur Emil Florian.’

‘Emil? So?’

More towelling down. More flexing of the absurdly pumped-up physique. Bonbon sidled off in the direction of the multi-gym.

‘Don’t go in there.’

‘Don’t worry. I won’t break it.’

‘When was the last time you spoke to Monsieur Florian?’

‘I dunno. Some weeks ago.’ One eye on Bonbon, Manou’s surliness was already turning into unease. ‘We don’t see each other much any more.’

‘Have you spoken to him on the phone?’

The sound of clinking weights.

‘Don’t touch that!’

‘Have you spoken to him on the phone, Manou?’